Abbey Dore
A week-long course in Herefordshire’s Golden Valley
ECE Cullercoats
A three-day course in St George’s, Cullercoats
Camerata Orford
Aimed at a chamber choir of expert, ambitious and high achieving singers. St Bartholomew’s church is within the Suffolk Coast and Heaths AONB and has premiered several works by Britten.
Camerata St Cross
Aimed at a chamber choir of expert, ambitious and high achieving singers and in the cathedral-like surroundings of Winchester’s Hospital of St Cross.
Paul Spicer was a chorister at New College, Oxford and later studied with Herbert Howells and Richard Popplewell (organ) at the Royal College of Music.
Paul is best known as a choral conductor partly through the many recordings he made with the Finzi Singers for Chandos records, and with the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir for Somm Records, as well as his numerous engagements with the BBC Singers. He conducted Bach Choirs in Chester and Leicester before moving to conduct the Bach Choir in Birmingham in 1992, an outstanding choir he conducts to this day. He conducted the Whitehall Choir in London between 2000 and 2017. He was the first person in the UK, along with Patrick Russill at the RAM, to create a Masters course in Choral Conducting at the Royal College of Music in London between 1995 and 2008. In 2006 he set up a similar course at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and took over the direction of what was to become its flagship chamber choir. He also taught at Oxford and Durham Universities. He retired from institutional teaching in 2022. Since 2005 Paul has been the Festival Conductor of the Petersfield Festival in Hampshire.
In 2007 he founded the English Choral Experience choral courses based initially at Dore Abbey in Herefordshire. This still remains at the heart of this operation as a week-long course in July. Shorter ‘Camerata’ weekend courses were later developed and are regularly placed throughout the year at the moment in Winchester, Orford, and Cullercoats, north of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
Paul was Senior Producer for BBC Radio 3 in the Midlands based in Birmingham for six years from 1984-1990, after which he moved to be Artistic Director of the Lichfield Arts Festival and the Abbotsholme Arts Society, posts he relinquished in 2001 in order to pursue a freelance musical career.
Paul Spicer’s highly acclaimed biography of his composition teacher, Herbert Howells, was published in 1998 and has been reprinted twice. His large-scale biography of Sir George Dyson was published in 2014, and his biography of Sir Arthur Bliss was published in 2024. His latest book on Choral Conducting The Generosity of Gesture was released in early 2026. His new book is a personal survey of English choral music over the last 600 years. Paul’s English Pastoral Partsongs volume for OUP is widely used.
He has written countless articles for many periodicals and is a contributor to the Dictionary of National Biography. He was commissioned by the Britten-Pears Foundation and Boosey & Hawkes to write the first practical guide to all Benjamin Britten’s choral music for Britten’s centenary in 2013, something he has continued to do for all Sir James MacMillan’s growing choral output. He has also contributed chapters to books on Herbert Howells, Stanford, 21st century music, and Bliss and the Dance.
As a composer his Easter Oratorio was hailed as ‘the best of its kind to have appeared…since Howells’ Hymnus Paradisi.’ The recording by the Birmingham Bach Choir, English Symphony Orchestra and soloists was also chosen as an Editor’s Choice in the same magazine. The Deciduous Cross, a work for choir and winds, based on five poems by R S Thomas was premiered in 2003. Recordings of his complete works for organ and shorter choral works have followed. Paul’s Advent Oratorio was premiered in Lichfield cathedral in 2009. More recent works have included three Cantatas (one for upper voices) and numerous shorter choral works, which are published by Boosey&Hawkes, Banks of York and Novello (Wise Music). Most of his organ music is published by Trumph Publications (Sweden)..
To commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of the 1914-18 War, Birmingham Bach Choir commissioned Paul to write a major choral and orchestral work, a Choral Symphony called Unfinished Remembering which was premiered in Symphony Hall, Birmingham, in September 2014. The libretto is by the poet, Euan Tait.
Paul Spicer is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, an Honorary Research Fellow of Birmingham University, an Honorary Fellow of Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, an Honorary Fellow of University College, Durham, a Trustee of the Finzi Trust, Chairman and Vice-President of the Herbert Howells Society, Chairman of the Sir George Dyson Trust, and was for nine years until 2025, a lay member of the Chapter of Lichfield Cathedral. In 2026 he was awarded the Medal of the Royal College of Organists for his ‘distinguished achievement in choral conducting and pedagogy, and scholarship’.